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Most of the world’s maple syrup comes from Canada, about 80 percent of
it, in fact. Which made it all the more curious that online searches for
syrup almost never pointed people who were looking for some pancake
topping or waffle sauce to the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup
Producers.

The organization had a great website,
but not too many people were actually getting to see it. Public
relations and marketing firm CRT/tanaka analyzed the site and found that
the content simply wasn’t optimized to draw in people searching via
Google and other search engines.

The agency took two months to resolve that problem, and in doing so
earned PR Daily’s PR & Social Media Award for Best Use of SEO.

CRT/tanaka opted to go beyond general terms such as “maple syrup.” Other
companies had already invested too much in winning the top results on
those search terms. Instead, the agency targeted specific terms it
identified as having a high search volume and low competition. Those
included “maple recipes Canada,” “maple syrup nutrition,” and “pure
Canadian maple syrup.”

Not only did that help put the Federation near the top of the results
for certain searches, it also helped get its message out that syrup is a
healthy alternative to sugar and is great for cooking.

Over the course of two months in early 2011, the agency completely
overhauled the site, from the content to navigation to social sharing.
Page titles, headlines, and page descriptions all changed, and the site
was relaunched on March 1, 2011.

The results were explosive. Visits increased by a factor of nearly four,
page views increased 514 percent, and visits from Google searches were
nearly six times as high as the year prior. Plus, the Federation now
sits atop the Google search results for 50 search terms.